Darin St. George: Where's your head at?

Darin St. George

Tuesday

Jan 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMJan 26, 2010 at 9:21 AM

What is fitness, anyway? "Run like someone's chasing you, lift like something fell on you and eat like someone else," I repeatedly say. There must be some element that makes it more difficult than that, though, or everyone would be buff and I would work for NASA (my fall-back career choice). Oh, right: It is people's emotional and intellectual capabilities that ultimately lead to success and failure.

What is fitness, anyway? "Run like someone's chasing you, lift like something fell on you and eat like someone else," as good old Trainer X repeatedly says. There must be some element that makes it more difficult than that, though, or everyone would be buff and I would work for NASA (my fall-back career choice).

Oh, right: It is people's emotional and intellectual capabilities that ultimately lead to success and failure. Oops!

Where's your head? Is it in the gym or at work? This has always been a big issue with the people I work with; they stress about all the things that they have to do after their training session and end up missing the beating that I had in store for them. And then later on during the day, they e-mail me that they "wish they could leave work and come back to the gym and really rip it up!" Huh?!?! Weren't you just in the gym this morning with the weights in your hands, my friend?

Keep focused: When you're able to train, train your butt off and forget all the rest of it. The time to worry about a meeting later on in the day is not when you're barbell squatting.

I will exercise right after I (fill in monumental check list here). People say that I am crazy and some claim me to be ultra-selfish for saying this, but I always take care of No. 1. I wake up as early as 2 a.m. in order to marathon train before I have to start all the processes that we share called "the work day." If my day is spent being pulled in a million (I counted) directions, I am happy knowing that nobody is going to get in the way of me taking care of myself first -- I do it when you're all asleep.

Lock and load -- this is a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly battle. If you think that your health and fitness goals have a time limit, can be postponed or are achievable "before you go away," I know where your head is -- on your pillow because you're dreaming! The quicker you wrap your head around fitness being part of your everyday life, the quicker you'll get where you want to be.

Darin St. George is a personal fitness coach at Gold's Gym in Natick, Mass. Visit his Web site at www.TrainerX.com.

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